I have always been a rigid advocate of the dangers and ignorance of purchasing department store bikes. having a *al *art 35 miles away this is our bicycle sales competition. This article is also taped to the front door.http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml02/02183.html

I completely agree that bikes should be purchased from LBSes, where consumers can benefit from the knowledge and experience of a trained staff.

I also agree, that X-Mart bikes are usually little more than blobs of metallic ****e with wheels.

On the other hand, and in all fairness, I've seen the CPSC recall bikes from highly reputable manufacturers that are only sold through LBSes. These incude Rocky Mountain, Diamondback and Specialized. The fact that an X-Mart bike has been recalled doesn't actually prove anything one way or another about the relative merits of LBSes over X-Marts.

__________________when walking, just walk. when sitting, just sit. when riding, just ride. above all, don't wobble.

But I used to work at a Toys R Us, and we had excellent mechanics at the time. One of them had even been a pit-crew mechanic for a racer (among other interesting jobs.) I asked them questions about bikes, and they complained about what garbage all the bikes we sold were, about how many were returned defective, and how hard they were to put together so that they actually worked, and that even the expensive Pacific bikes we were just starting to get were second-rate bikes with slightly better name-brand add-ons. That's the real reason I bought a bike-shop bike this time, and told my brother to keep my old Huffy which his family has been borrowing for five years.

(Note, though--that particular model of Huffy, whose name I can't recall, actually was a half-decent machine, and was even mentioned in a few bike publications as an extreme low-end best choice.)

The thing is, when a quality LBS finds out that one of their products is being recalled, they'll move heaven and earth to get the word out and the bad merchandise exchanged. This is partly covering their liability asses and also partly good public relations as far as doing some of what you could call safety outreach--anything that gets a customer in the door gives them the chance to see if you sell anything they want to buy. Yes, LBS bikes get recalled as do Frankenstore bikes, the difference is that most times the LBS is strongly motivated to do something about it!